Review » Beginner's Chess Course, by Enno Heyken

Photo by Wil C. Fry, 2021

★★ (of 5)

Full Title: Beginner’s Chess Course
Author: Enno Heyken
Translator: Annette Englander
Year: 1996 (mine was 1997 trade paperback)
Pages: 128
Genre: nonfiction
Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company
ISBN 0-8069-9969-1

The only book on chess at our closest public library, this short book contains quite a bit, but didn’t turn out to be particularly enjoyable or helpful for me. It was written by Enno Heyken, an “international chessmaster” and former trainer of the German Chess Association, later turned psychologist — he wrote his thesis on the psychology of chess and taught chess as a college course.

After an interesting history of chess and modern world champions, which I found fascinating, he takes ten pages or so to explain the rules of the game — the longest, most convoluted explanation of the game’s rules I’ve ever seen. Then, immediately, he dives into checkmate — not the rules of checkmate, but strategies for it and how different mates play out — in a fairly complex manner for a “beginner”. (I’m no chess beginner, but this part was heavy.)

Then, still ignoring openings, he moves directly to midgame battles, combinations, pinning, “discovered check”, and so on. Later in the book, Heyken uses several examples of real games by world champions to illustrate different types of chess games, strategy versus tactics, sacrifices, etc.

What I was hoping to find was some beginner-level instruction on which openings work well and why, how to transition from the opening to the middle game, and some basic tips. I did not find that. There were other problems:

There were several mistakes, whether Heyken’s own or introduced by translator or publisher, I have no idea. (“...when a piece or piece threatens...” [page 20], for example, and mentioning the “b1-h1 diagonal”, which should be “b1-h7”, and in at least one of the games, he skips a couple of moves by accident, forcing the reader to guess.)
Parts are outdated, like the notation he uses. Most modern chess associations (and apps and sites online) use a form of algebraic notation, which doesn’t list the starting square of the piece, just the ending square. Heyken uses the long-outdated method of listing the starting square first (which is usually unnecessary and certainly makes reading more difficult when you’re accustomed to the shorter form).
Unlike other chess books I’ve seen, which either use a single image for each example with lots of notation, or images for every single move, Heyken uses a weird combination of the two, with several images but lots of unseen moves between each illustration. And his notations for each game are spread out over several pages, interspersed between paragraphs of commentary. And within that commentary, he’ll list other possible moves, or moves rejected by the players, before mentioning the actual moves. All this is confusing.
Even within his paragraphs of commentary, he uses notation instead of words. For example:
“What now? After 2. ... Kg8 - g7 comes 3. Bg5 x f6+ Rf7 x f6 4. Rf2 x f6 Qe6 x f6 5. Rf1 x f6, and Black again would have lost his queen for a rook.”
— page 47
In several instances, I discovered that the written notations did not match the piece positions in the illustrations.

There were a few redeeming values. For example, there’s a chapter right in the middle called “If Chess Pieces Could Talk” (which he weirdly introduces by assuring the reader that chess pieces can’t actually talk, as if some readers might have wondered about that). There are helpful tips here, of the type I was looking for, like why to avoid doubled pawns, or advice to position bishops on the longer diagonals, and what to do or not do with other pieces. I think this chapter might have been better positioned earlier, perhaps just after explaining the rules. And, in some of the championship games that follows, he refers back to this chapter when a good example arises.

I’m sure I learned a few things from this book, but overall it was not the book I had hoped it would be — and I’m certain that a true beginner would have found much of it mystifying.